Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, we found many good cases. I found where I would want to be arrested and detained and where not. There were many good cases of consular officers going above and beyond in providing assistance to Canadians.

Foreign Affairs committee  The consular services that Canada offers are based on the Vienna convention. These are pretty standard consular services across like-minded countries. The 24-hour contact is standard across many European countries, and with the U.S. as well.

Foreign Affairs committee  We didn't look into how Canada compares with the other countries.

Foreign Affairs committee  In their 52 standards they list on their website, there isn't evacuation. They do not regularly evacuate people in trouble zones. What they do is inform them that trouble is coming, and they will offer information to affected Canadians on how they get in touch with different travel providers.

Foreign Affairs committee  We didn't see that Global Affairs had any of those agreements in place. When there is an emergency like a hurricane that affects Canadians, and depending on the scale of the emergency, it's a whole-of-government response that may involve DND or the reserves in helping Canadians.

Foreign Affairs committee  Global Affairs does not have a time standard. That was an issue we had in conducting the audit. Justice O'Connor's recommendation was to promptly inform, but there has been no time standard such as the 72 hours that has been set. In our view, taking more than a month to inform the minister on cases of a Canadian who has likely been tortured or mistreated does not meet the intent of Justice O'Connor's recommendation.

Foreign Affairs committee  The provision of assistance to Canadians detained abroad is a discretionary service. There's the service standard of 24 hours, and then, depending on the region where the person is detained, there's ongoing contact at regular intervals, with more frequent contact required when the region is judged to have harsher conditions.

Foreign Affairs committee  We didn't...we have a number of requests for assistance that they responded to—

Foreign Affairs committee  For the 5,000 requests for assistance by telephone or email that Global Affairs received, they tracked that they responded to them within an average of two minutes. That was a very fast response time to those inquiries.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, it is.

Public Accounts committee  We looked at the 15 cases in which allegations of torture or mistreatment were made during our audit period. In some cases we found that they would first need to assess the credibility, and we found that it ranged from a couple of months to six months for that assessment to be made.

Public Accounts committee  That's the data that we had, and we confirmed it with Global Affairs on the number of visits abroad in that year. We didn't look more recently at 2016 data, but we verified it with public information available on site.

Public Accounts committee  We had not previously done an audit on consular services.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  We did focus on the initial contact in 24 hours and then on the ongoing contact for those who were imprisoned for longer than a week. In order for the consular officials to then make contact with the family members and advocate on their behalf, they are required to obtain consent.